Trump orders DoE to prepare to conduct nuke test "for political purposes"

[muriel_volestrangler]

Many thanks to Hermit-The-Prog for posting this, from Time, in Editorials: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016200811

Since 1993, the Department of Energy has had to be ready to conduct a nuclear test within two to three years if ordered by the President. Late last year, the Trump Administration ordered the department to be ready, for the first time, to conduct a short-notice nuclear test in as little as six months.

That is not enough time to install the warhead in shafts as deep as 4,000 ft. and affix all the proper technical instrumentation and diagnostics equipment. But the purpose of such a detonation, which the Administration labels “a simple test, with waivers and simplified processes,” would not be to ensure that the nation’s most powerful weapons were in operational order, or to check whether a new type of warhead worked, a TIME review of nuclear-policy documents has found. Rather, a National Nuclear Security Administration official tells TIME, such a test would be “conducted for political purposes.”

The point, this and other sources say, would be to show Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Iran’s Ayatullah Ali Khamenei and other adversaries what they are up against.

Trump's been looking in the mirror, and feeling his button's looking a little small and underused.

[Hekate]

1. He's gonna get us all killed, isn't he?

[HipChick]

2. Better that than Mueller discovering all his dirty deeds

[Voltaire2]

5. Most likely a lot of non-Americans are going

to get killed. Then we can all agree that, by the numbers, Shitler is the worst president ever.

Unfortunately murdering a lot of Koreans will probably be popular with about 40% of the population.

[lunasun]

28. Yes USA USA USA at least 40%

[Demsrule86]

3. He is going to get us killed...he is the worst.

[democratisphere]

4. drumpf insanity continues to grow.

[Farmer-Rick]

6. Where in the US and it's surroundings can you test a nuke with no danger from fall out?

Years ago we didn't know the affects of radiation. To this day, people in the midwest, where the nukes were tested, suffer from higher rates of thyroid problems.

The North Korean people will suffer for a long time due to the nukes tested in their country. And when Trump tests a nuke here, many, many US citizens will suffer the consequences.

[Lee-Lee]

10. Underground tests dont have fallout

Fallout happens when a nuclear device is detonated at or close to the earths surface, resulting in irradiated debris being thrown into the atmosphere and spread by lower and upper level winds.


Underground testing thousands of feet down is used to ensure all that is contained underground

The last underground test in the us was as recent as 1992.

[Farmer-Rick]

11. Don't they create problems underground to water tables

Unstable titanic plates and underground life? I really don't believe the North Korean tests don't hurt anything.

Once you've done one of those underground nuke tests, can you farm the land, run underground pipes or dig at the site?

[Lee-Lee]

12. The US does them at a remote site in Nevada

There have been hundreds detonated there. It’s done well below the water table and nobody would be farming there even if it wasn’t in the middle of highly restricted federal property. Essentially the radiation gets sealed off underground.

At one point the US did two unground tests outside Hattiesburg MS and today the area above is farmland.

The North Koreans have been much less careful about location and have been using tunnels carved into a mountain. Reports are the access shaft may have partially collapsed and made the whole area unstable because they were doing too many tests in a small area.

[Farmer-Rick]

17. Thanks for that info

Really we have had hundreds detonated? Wow, I had no idea.

[Lee-Lee]

20. 1054 Nuclear detonations by the US by official counts

“The nuclear weapons tests of the United States were performed between 1945 and 1992 as part of the nuclear arms race. The United States conducted around 1,054 nuclear tests by official count, including 216 atmospheric, underwater, and space tests.[1] Most of the tests took place at the Nevada Test Site (NNSS/NTS) and the Pacific Proving Grounds in the Marshall Islands and off Kiribati Island in the Pacific, plus three in the Atlantic Ocean. Ten other tests took place at various locations in the United States, including Alaska, Nevada other than the NNSS/NTS, Colorado, Mississippi, and New Mexico.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests_of_the_United_States

Total devices detonated worldwide is just under 2500 for all countries.

[Farmer-Rick]

24. Geez, I had absolutely no idea so many nukes have been detonated

Glad I joined DU. I learn something new every day. I love smart people. Thanks for the info

[petronius]

27. Here's an interesting animation, up to 1998

Run it at 2x speed, and watch the world burn...

[davekriss]

32. The world is armed to its teeth, isn't it?

And who led the way? Where will it end?

Fascinating both as sound and visual.

[Brother Buzz]

23. A little off topic, my SIL's brother, an engineer, spent his entire career....

designing and overseeing the construction of the bores. They are not cheap holes.

[Farmer-Rick]

25. Now, you are just making it more interesting

Bores huh? I really did think they shoved them down a hole. Thanks.

[Brother Buzz]

30. They were big, secret projects that cost big bucks

and the operative word is 'secret' so the Internets have hatched all sorts of conspiracies surrounding them to include aliens and super secret underground cities. My SIL's brother never could talk about what he was actually doing, but we'd read in the newspapers when one was fired off.

[Vinca]

7. Trump is not just stupid, he's dangerously stupid.

The icing on the cake is Dancin' Rick Perry as head of the DoE. They're going to get us all killed.

[burnbaby]

8. I haven't read the other

post, but a Nuke test? Won't that kill us all?!!!!

[mopinko]

14. um. no.

there have been a lot of nuke tests. most of us are still here.
people did die. but, yeah, most of us are still here.

[Dave Starsky]

21. I have to remind myself that we have a lot of youngsters here...

Who don't remember nuke tests, fallout, duck-and-cover drills, B-52s (not the Rock Lobster people), bomb shelters, CD logos, Bikini Atoll, and all that other atomic bomb stuff old farts like me take for granted.

That's what disturbs me most about the Orange Menace. He grew up during the same Cold War that I did, and he hasn't the first clue about how any of it works. He has no excuse.

[Mad_Mongol]

9. The USA was the FIRST signator of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996

Though we have yet to ratify it.

The US stopped testing after "divider" in the summer of 1992.

I'm pretty damn sure that we lead the CTBT in 1996, only because we no longer need to test to validate new designs. The only argument for testing is the need to verify stockpile integrity; a political reason.


If the administration goes through with this provocative action, it will ignite an arms race.

It's another thing for us to write to our respective Congress critter to address.

[Dave Starsky]

22. I remember the President that introduced the START Treaty...

That substantially reduced the number of nuclear warheads in the Soviet and American arsenals, because he was genuinely freaked out about nuclear war.

Can't remember the guy's name. I think his initials were RR.

[zentrum]

13. This is frightening

…..more and more every day.

Before his SOU address Trump opined that we needed a big bad events because that kind of thing unites all us Americans. He'd do anything to avoid being caught for his crimes. Sure feels like he's planning a war. This isn't about button size. It's about getting ready for "an event".

[RKP5637]

15. Yep, he's looking for massive deflection from his criminality and investigations. n/t

[bitterross]

16. I really am torn about this. I want to say NO because it's 45, but...

I actually have some mixed feelings about this. My first reaction was - hell no, we shouldn't even consider this. Then I started thinking about how I didn't take Romney seriously when he said the Russians were our biggest threat. Look where that got us. Now I'm actually considering how MAD might need to be continued. What a crazy world we live in.

Someone make some sense out of this for me.

[moriah]

18. MAD doesn't work, and didn't.

Russia always focused on the idea of having a surviving population.

They were boosted in this perception by the fact they had people living near the "Polygon" test site who were being exposed to fallout regularly, over 100 above-ground tests. I have no doubt that they fact they can produce "40 year studies" on the 200,000 so exposed (test site was a mere 40 miles from an acknowledged town and villages were also around despite the Soviet claim then the area was uninhabited) when I'm not yet 40 means that the Russian government was tracking health effects from the beginning.

With Trump talking not about large nukes but "small" ones, we certainly aren't going the MAD route, except to perhaps try to take out NK without significant fallout hitting other nuclear powers. Which means we'd be setting the example that other nations would try to follow, which eventually would mean one of our treaty-bound allies gets attacked, which would lead to full-scale nuclear war eventually. Just a slower buildup from the third nuke we'd have dropped in war.

Nukes aren't the answer. Unless you're very dedicated to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, beyond their own stated principles. Wildlife has thrived after recovery time near Chernobyl and the Polygon test site.

The more hopeful scenario is that instead of taking us as an example that the world community would decide WE were too great a threat to world security to possess nuclear technology. Which would likely still lead to war. But maybe not the entire world getting bombed to shit, just us.

[bitterross]

19. Thank you. Good points.

The points about "small" nukes are important.

[Flaleftist]

31. It seems rather pointless.

N. Korea does them to actually test them and prove to the world that have the technology, no? Everyone already knows the U.S has them, so what’s the point? It’s not like there is a specific reason officials in charge of the U.S. nuclear arsenal want a test. This is all about Trump, IMO.

[davekriss]

33. Notice the pattern in the animation, above

Once the USSR got going, there was almost perfect synchrony between a test by us and a test by them. It was a form of hellish political speech, each nation telling the other "watch out, look what I can do!". That the evil was contained since Nagasaki, meaning we haven't been using nukes to blow each other up, means MAD worked very well (I address another poster with this last remark). However, it is mad as in insane, stupid, sad that we have these weapons and that's how nations with millions of people feel they need to speak to each other. Now we have a genuine madman in 45 with his little hands on a huge arsenal. The risk is real that through his blunderous ignorance he sets off one of the many hair triggers ready to destroy us all.

We really need to impeach this guy. The only way to do that is to win the House and the Senate. That won't be easy to do, seeing that Republicans, now apparently with Russian help, have been stealing elections for some time.

[doc03]

26. They don't know we have them? I guess Trump thinks they don't. nt

[procon]

29. Gawd, I hope we can get back control of congress before that baboon

starts throwing around nuclear bombs "for political purposes". I should apologize Kim Jong-un for ever thinking that he was the craziest tyrant in the box, because we have Trump with extra nuts, wrapped in gold foil, and he even comes with a squishy marshmallow center.